President Noynoy Aquino became a poster boy for anti-smoking advocates here who paraded around the city Wednesday to culminate the World No Tobacco Month.
The anti-smoking advocates, joined mostly by students from the Negros Oriental State University and Foundation University, held tarpaulins with a photo of the President holding a cigarette with the caption: “What Pnoy can’t do we can do. Stop Smoking.”
Dr. Aparicio Mequi, dean of the Foundation University Graduate School, said the message of the day was to tell everyone, without exception, even Pnoy, that smoking is not good for one’s health.
“If US President Obama, who was a smoker, quit smoking when he became President, we should likewise remind President Aquino to stop smoking and in the process protect his health as wel as the vote of those people who put him into the highest level of leadership in our country,” Mequi said.
The President had earlier told reporters that he would not yet quit smoking but he would not smoke in public places.
President Aquino has been on the receiving end of a lot of unsolicited advice against smoking. Last month, participants to the Tobacco Control Summit 2011 organized by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance Philippines and the Philippine College of Chest Physicians were one in their call for President Benigno Aquino III to stop smoking and lead the Philippines into becoming a tobacco-free country.
Two months ago, the President said he would no longer debate about his smoking habit with groups seeking to make him an anti-smoking poster boy.
Aquino who could finish a pack a day, has vowed to stop “at the appropriate time.”
Aquino said he was not ready to quit because of the pressures of the job but admitted that he was aware of the health risks of smoking.